1 but granite, even children may be allowed to play with lucifers. It is because Ireland is a magazine that the amusement is there so terribly formidable. There are probably not in the island ten thousand Fenians, but the sympathy with Fenianism, the sense that their wild project is the evil expression of a good thought, the hysterical appeal for love to the sister who gives only justice, pervades every class but that which owns the soil. Everywhere English travellers find the peasantry at heart sympathizing with the Fenians. Everywhere they hear the same conviction that Ireland is at last to be a nation, to be relieved from that cold just rule which no nation not of our blood has ever yet been able either to like or to shake off. Everywhere they become conscious of the existence in the Irish mind of an ideal, a vision, a hope cherished often by men who know that it is baseless-and the idea, the vision, and the hope are all alike fatal to those which Englishmen entertain. Everywhere they hear the same thought, that Irishmen want a country and cannot find one, the vague expression of a discontent which, like the discontent of a man forced into a groove unsuited to his genius, is but the deeper because it has so little quotable justification. There, we believe, is the very root of all the mischief in Ireland. We insist, Mr. Roebuck insisted in this very debate, in words which read like screams, that Ireland shall be English, shall be justly governed, but by English laws, shall be enriched, but by English modes of toil, shall be happy, but on the English theory, in which happiness means only comfort. The Irish desire all those things, but in the Irish way. Why should they not have them? The Scotch have them and the English, and their union is but the firmer for the difference in nationality. The Highlander does not fight the less ardently for the throne because he wears a kilt, but more ardently, the symbol being to him proof that his is the cause of his own land as well as of the empire to which he belongs. Is there a General in Great Britain who would venture to propose the abolition of Highland regiments, or one who would not be shocked to see Irishmen in their national green and gold? Who protests in Edinburgh against the Highland dress? The Irish dress is in Dublin at this moment so proscribed, that its mere possession may ensure a sentence to Pentonville. That difference on the smallest of questions is an index of the difference in our treatment of the largest. We honestly try to do justice to Ireland, but it is the justice of a judge, not that of a warm friend. Grant that the idea of nationality in Ireland is a whim, or even a silly whim, still the first condition of friendship is a readiness to recognize idiosyncrasies of that kind, to accept oddities, or "ways," or even radical differences of temperament at the very least not to censure or deride them. We concede the whims to the nation we like, why not to the nation which we want to like us? Mr. Bright says the statesmen of England are bound to do justice to Ireland, to devote to her affairs the attention never refused when English or Scotch counties are aggrieved, and so also say we, with the addition that we are bound to devote it in a spirit of hearty cordiality. The two people are bound together for better or worse inseparably, and justice, though the wife's first right, is not the first claim she makes upon her lord. What sort of a union is that in which, while the wife is always discontented, the husband tells all the world that he is severely just to her? We may and must abolish the hostile Church Establishment that corporation which seems to Catholic Irishmen to tax their bodies in order that it may have means to damn their souls and we may one day bring the tenure into harmony with Irish ideas; but we must do more than this. We must cease to tell the wife every hour that she is only a woman, cease to taunt Irishmen with being Irish, cease to say or to think when a million of our brethren go into exile that it is a pleasant riddance. There is no more reason why Irishmen, fairly admitted into the great family, should not be devoted to the family interest, than there is why Scotchmen should not be. They are Celts? So are the Highlanders and the Welsh. They are Catholics? So are some of the noblest and most loyal of British families. They are, in short, Irishmen? Well, Irishmen are, as such, not only good subjects, but have a singular adaptability for foreign careers, rise in Austria, or Spain, or _France, or America, or for that matter England, to the very top, and exhibit in every English colony the very capacity of getting on on which we pride ourselves so much. Who wants better kinsmen than the "rebels D'Arcy McGee and Gavan Duffy? The difference of creed is no wider than that which exists in Prussia and is scarcely heard of, the difference of race less wide than that which separates the Strasburgher from the Parisian. Of the true antipathy of race, the instinct which is said to separate colours, there is scarcely a trace. Who scruples to marry an Irish girl, or is ashamed to enter an | must have felt that a little ignorance would Irish family, or avoids anything Irish, un- greatly increase their knowledge. On less it be Irish landed property There is Saturday all was peace, and on Monday all really nothing to overcome, except that warlike again; on Tuesday Lippe Lemberg baneful belief of which Mr. Roebuck and had offered mediation, and metal liques Mr. Horsman are the exponents, that a went up 1 per cent.; on Wednesday the thing, or a system, or an idea which happens Emperor Napoleon was seen pulling his to be English must therefore be best, that moustache, and rentes fell two; on Thursbecause there can be but one motive-power day Garibaldi had left Caprera, and the there must also be but one mode of apply- world was consequently on fire; and on ing it. Suppose we try the one experi- Friday Bismark had gout, and the human ment never yet tried amid all our efforts, race was consequently saved. Every gosand instead of coercing Irish nationality, sip had a new story, and the greatest gossip recognize it as we have done Scotch nation- of all, the mysterious entity which calls itality, foster it, and so bind it into our own? self" Reuter," and which manufactures hisAre we the weaker or the stronger because tory by the drachm, publishes on an aver men who share every English success and age three irreconcilable statements a day. English failure still glow with pleasure at All this while the few grave facts of the sitthe thought that they are not English, but uation have scarcely changed at all. Prus other, still quote with pride to Englishmen sia has not given up her demand for Hola history which is one long record of resis- stein, or withdrawn the order placing five tance to English oppression, still march by corps d'armée in readiness for active ser the side of English soldiers to an air which vice, or dismissed Count von Bismark to the tells of a great English defeat? Suppose exile which is for him the only alternative we give over taunting the wife with her of success. The proposal to reform the weakness, and her zeal for her priest, and Federation by a mass vote has not been her taste for obvious millinery, and culti- abandoned, nor have the Princelings sevate, instead of coercing, her womanliness? lected the sauce with which they would Would not the Union become a little more best like to be eaten. Austria has not real, a little more perfect, a little less liable waived, or sold, or pledged her right to to sudden and causeless breaches? Just at the Duchies, or modified her formal decision present she is flinging the china in hot fury to fight rather than be turned out, or beat her husband, and that must be stopped, come less sensitive to her position in Gerbut afterwards, divorce being impossible? many, or commenced any negotiation for the evacuation of Venice. The Emperor Napoleon has not broken silence, or the Czar published any threat, or Victor Emanuel recalled the orders for the rapid concentration of forces to the North. Nothing in fact has changed, either in the motives which impel the German Powers to battle, in the incidents which show that those motives are becoming powerful, or in the tone those motives impel them to preserve, or indeed in anything except publicists' "views" of the ultimate result. The positive facts are not peaceful, and the negative facts are decidedly disquieting. The positive facts are that Count von Bismark has returned a half consent to the demand to disarm, that Italy is arming fast and anxious for money, that the Kaiser has given Hungary new assurances of his good faith, that metalliques are sinking steadily, that the "minor Powers are scuttling about like crows when a storm is nigh, and that M. Paulin Limayrac, who is to the French Foreign Office pretty nearly what paper is to a journalist, keeps telling France not to be frightened, for the Emperor will wait events. "Don't be afraid for the dogs, mother," says the sedate child; From The Spectator 28th April. THE times are very hard indeed for credulous people-the country clergymen, stockbrokers, squires, and other innocent persons, who believe that telegrams must have some foundation, that despatches must either reveal or cloak a meaning, that inspired journals must speak truth, that the Times knows anything. What with snippety extracts from Continental papers, leaders in the Times, forged letters from the Foreign Office to explain the leaders, rumours from Berlin, gossip from Italy, special telegrams from Vienna, important documents from the great chancelleries too old to be of any use, and bran new documents from chancelleries too small to be of any importance, they must during the past week have been not a little bewildered. They " "I shan't separate them till I see which is | else may be wrong, for General la Marmora strongest." The negative facts are that if can hardly be better informed than M. de the Powers meant peace they would certain- Metternich, and he, it is affirmed, believes ly say so, to avoid the immense losses un- in a favourable issue; but none of those certainty inflicts upon their revenues, and preparations tend to peace. People who as yet they have not said a word; that have just screwed themselves up to some no journal has been "invited" on either great effort are apt to wish at last that the side to leave off abusing a friendly power; necessity for the effort would come, to and that not a word, good or bad, can be feel, if it is put off, as if they had wasted extracted from Napoleon, whose temptation power. The movement of armies tends to is certainly not a mania for non-interven- increase the bitterness between nations, and tion. We must class among the negatives a proud country like Austria, threatened also what at first looks like positive fact, the on both sides, may be goaded into taking absence of any decision in the Roumanian that dangerous initiative which the malaquarrel. There is a very ugly though some- droit person who forged Mr. Lister's letter what obscure little game playing out there, to the Times, and put on it both frank and which, if great persons, were not watching postage stamp, ascribed to her. Indeed it greater events, would no doubt produce is just conceivable that the Kaiser, aware results. What in the world put Charles of the existence of a plan which he cannot of Hohenzollern, Catholic and Prussian, re- alter, and which means war at a moment to lated to Frederick William, connected with be fixed by his enemies, may choose to fix the Beauharnais, into the head of Greek the moment himself, and pour into Saxony Slavs upon the Danube as their fitting king? as he once poured through Lombardy to Napoleon? or hatred of Austria? or what? anticipate his foes. Such rashness, the His refusal has increased the Republican Times tells him, would loose him the moral party in the Principalities, and the inaction sympathies of Europe; but then, when batof Conference in presence of such a danger helps to prove that its members are paralyzed by the bitterness raging between their employers. tle has joined, moral sympathies do not, in the judgment of military sovereigns, count for much. They are apt to prefer a sympathy reducible either to conscripts or Of course, war not having been declared, to cash. There are in fact plenty of reasons the possibilities of peace are not over, nor to convince the actual rulers of the world have the conservative forces which tend to that they had better not fight, but there is peace lost their usual hold. Kings know, as yet no proof that those reasons have inas they knew last week, that war has terri-spired that conviction. The balance of ble risks, and their subjects know that, evidence still shows that Austria is willing beaten or victorious, they will have to pay. to fight rather than give way, and Prussia If Frederick William chooses to avoid war rather than draw back, and that is all and wait for a better opportunity, he can any human being, beyond the short list avoid it at the price of reconciliation with of sovereigns and statesmen engaged, can his people, an option which has been before justly pretend to know. him any time these three months; and if the people of Prussia are unanimous, they can make him avoid it. They, however, only protest in addresses on behalf of economy, and the King's servant, whom he can dismiss with a word, tells them in reply that he shall avoid war "if he can," i. e., if he can secure his ends without it, but that economy is not the only thing to be thought of," a very menacing truism. It is very unlikely indeed, again, that Italy, with half her army on furlough, a budget not yet accepted, a very great deficit, and a Premier who understands organization, should suddenly recall her soldiers, accumulate 40,000 men on the Po, collect a pontoon train, and make inquiries about loans certainly in Paris, and it is possible in Berlinunless her Ministers really believed in war. They may be wrong, as everybody There is one view of all these events to which we have never yet alluded, but which has some curious hold on the public mind. This is what we may call the dramatic, or rather the histrionic, theory. There are very worthy and tolerably well informed people in clubs and elsewhere who will tell you that the visible moves on the European chess-board are all unreal, that there is a plot to be worked out to which only themselves have the clue, that Napoleon has bought Sardinia or arranged for the Rhine, that Roumania is to be given to Austria and the Duchies to Prussia and the cold shoulder to St. Petersburg, that the solution is on the Danube, or in a Congress, or in Belgium, or, in short, in any place or any transaction which nobody else expects. Exiles believe that kind of thing with most undoubting faith, just as Islington believes that all com motions in the universe, from the arrival of the new star to the disappearance of the last bankrupt, are the work either of the Jesuits or the Pope. Well, it may all be true, only a little ignorance, as we said, would make us all so very much more learned. As a rule, for the last fifty years every nation in Europe has declared war or made peace according to the general drift of its policy, or its interests, or, in one or two instances, its ingrained beliefs and prejudices. Plots have been many, but no plot can be said to have been worked out successfully by war, because war demands nowadays too many visible preparations and the aid of too many people. Kings have to trust subordinates, communication is quick, cyphers are faithful, and money has not lost its power, and any plot made anywhere against a throne is usually known very speedily to those whom the intrigue menaces. It is therefore always by far the safer course for observers to clear their minds of belief in plots, to understand the chief motives which guide the men who control armies, and to let mysterious rumours of wonderful combination slide. The greatest "plotter" in Europe plots simply by waiting for events, and he was outwitted by Count Cavour, who did precisely the same thing; and the watchers for plots, if right once in a hundred years, are pretty sure to be wrong for the other ninety and nine. The root of the mischief to-day may, for what we know, be an intrigue of Turkey to seize Heligoland, but the balance of probabilities is that its source is the desire of the Prussian monarchy to annex the two Duchies taken from Denmark. If that proves in the end to be the case, if in fact all the statesmen of Europe are not in a conspiracy to tell fibs with unction, the difficulty is not settled, or very likely to be, yet. or two, or three recesses, are supposed to belong to one particular period, but that does not prevent the portraits of the same indi vidual from being on half-a-dozen walls. He might imagine that comparison had been considered dangerous, many portraits of the same celebrity being so unlike that one of them is obviously fictitious, or one is bad, or both are unreal, but that some of the worst cases of all have been hung with intention side by side. There are two, for instance, of George Buchanan, a man chiefly known by his translation of the Psalms, hung side by side, one of which is palpably an absurdity. We do not care in such a case one straw for documentary proof. If the old man's spirit, were to rap decisively for a week that both were accurate portraits of him in the flesh, it would not make the faintest difference in the judgment of any man possessed of common sense and not utterly blind. If drawn from the same face, the painter of one was so utterly incompe tent that the picture has no locus standi as a portrait; but great as is the power of misrepresentation possessed by portrait painters, even this explanation is inadmissible. The portraits are not of the same man, the bones are different, the root-colour is different, the expression of the face is different, the very colour of the eyes, which do not change with age, is different. George Buchanan was very possibly like one of the two, preferentially the one on the left, but he was not like both. Portraits of Henry VIII., again, which are all alike, and all, with one remarkable exception, represent a heavy-jowled, light-haired, sensual man, of the jovially heartless type, are hung about over wall after wall, while of Queen Elizabeth there is also no end. The truth is that Mr. Cole, in his eagerness to make the collection " national," and "great," and " vast," and magnificent, and worthy of South Kensington, and of the wretched art-camp of iron, and wood, and glass, he and his employers are squatting down there, and for which they are constantly assailing the Treasury, and which would all burn like so much touchwood, has neglected to authenticate the portraits altogether. What is the use of an old portrait, particulary of the tea-tray kind, without a pedigree? Nobody wants to see the majority of these pictures as specimens of art, but as historic testimonies, the credibility of which must be proved by evidence, exactly like the credibility of documents or a counsel's speech. It is said in the preface to the catalogue, obviously writ ten after the pictures had arrived, that the "illusion," where there is one, is "harm less," and that it has "not been thought | ladylike woman who bore her, and the right towards those who have graciously queenly though vain woman who succeeded lent their portraits" to disabuse them, but her. No forger could give that. Who wants surely where truth is the sole object "illu- to be told that No. 132 is Anne of Cleves? sions," are never "harmless." Nobody is Of course it is Anne of Cleves, with the hurt if John Hodge believes in the sea ser- face of a stupid, heavy, Flemish servant of pent, but one does not expect a picture of to-day, eyes innocent enough, but heavy that reptile in a museum of natural history. cheeks, and lower lip, which drops with its As to politeness to owners, is none what- own fat, and look as if she could delight in ever due to the public asked to believe such eating a sausage before your very eyes. We rubbish? Mr. Cole seems to have thought do not know that we ever saw a face withof portraits as some theologians think about out vice in it so utterly disgusting, or one the Fathers, and some historians used to which realized so precisely Henry's conthink about the people they called authori- temptuously truthful epithet, the "Flemish ties. If the book were only old enough it mare." Edward IV. might have borne with was to be trusted. The father of the third her, at least if that white-breasted doll century, however stupid, or ignorant, or pre- Jane Shore be anything like his famous judiced, must know more about Christ's mistress and she may be, for she has teaching than the cool critic of the nine- just the meaningless prettiness of skin, teenth, because he only lived two hundred and colour, and sleepy eyes which attract i and fifty years after his subject, as if a judge kings and voluptuaries of king-like stupidity should accept the evidence of a man of today, about Elizabeth's death as contemporaneous testimony. A portrait is not necessarily taken from John Smith because known to have been in existencee when John Smith died, and accepted by Smith's great grandson, who never saw his ancestor, and has every possible interest in believing the truth of his "memorial." What is the use, for example, of hanging that little portrait of the Princess Mary, No. 208, in a historic gallery? It is no more Queen Mary than it is Mr. Cole, and not so much. It is not a As a rule-we are stating simply the Tudor at all; but a portrait of an ugly first impressions of a visitor who is no art young woman, with a complexion radically critic-the portraits leave the impression dark instead of clear, long pulpy nose, and that traditionary history has been strangely deep sensual under lip, the very feature correct. The popular impression coincides conspicuously wanting in Mary Tudor. almost exactly with the painted face, a reNever mind the pedigree of the picture. Any sult probably due at least as much to the number of lies are told about the ownership fact that tradition has been formed on the of pictures, and horses, and jewels, and every portraits as to any genuine truthfulness in thing else to which pedigree gives value, the painters. Look at the Kingmaker, for but just compare that face with the True instance, the great Neville; that face, with Mary (No. 212), the bad Mary, with the won- its look of pure blood, thin, worn, and derful Tudor brow, pinched lips, long drawn sinewy, but with the square brow and tiger either with cruelty or pain, hard and merci-jaw, is just the face one expects in the last leas as only such lips can be, and the look great Norman noble. It is the face of a out of the eyes as of a keen but not pene- high-born Lord Clyde on a greater scale, trating mind. Why is that the true Mary? and with the flush Lord Clyde lacked. Or Just because it is, because any schoolboy Richard III., with the pinched lips, chin so who had read history would pick it out of a full and broad as to seem inconsistent with hundred pictures, and say that that was the face, long upper lip, pulled as by voliQueen Mary, or ought to be; because no tion down over the teeth, and serene eyes forger would venture to put that brow and that look, like an Italian noble's eyes, outthat under lip into the same picture; be- wards, seeing things you do not see. cause, above all, there is in that pained and is Shakspeare's Richard to the life, Richrigid face a distinct likeness both to the ard the lawgiver as well as tyrant, Richard bluff ruffian who begot her, the heavy but whose crimes would have been forgotten but not Henry VIII. He had loved Anne Boleyn, who does not look much in her portraits here, but who had been loved by others than kings, and who lived in tradition till Shakespeare drew a portrait of her which will live when every canvass likeness has rotted into dust, perhaps when her name has been forgotten, except as one of the women on whom he has conferred immortality. Helen has survived Greek, why should not fair Mistress Anne survive English? 80 That |